Light from the Middle East: New Photography - Recording

Newsha Tavakolian, from the series 'Mothers of Martyrs'

Newsha Tavakolian
Born Tehran, Iran, 1981. Lives Tehran
From the series 'Mothers of Martyrs'
2006
Digital c-print
Museum no. E.357-2010
Art Fund Collection of Middle Eastern Photography at the V&A and the British Museum

Newsha Tavakolian started her career at the age of 16, as a junior photographer for the Iranian women’s daily Zan-e Rooz. She also worked with other reformist newspapers and by the early 1990s had established herself as one of Tehran’s few female photojournalists, working internationally and particularly focussing on women’s issues. She is a founder member of the EVE international collective of women photojournalists, established in 2006 and of Rawiya, a collective of women photographers from the Middle East, founded in 2011. Her series 'Mothers of Martyrs' shows elderly Iranian women holding framed photographs of their sons who died decades earlier in the Iran–Iraq war (1980–8). The double portraits attest to photography’s emotive power.